


Destiny Looms

by Nelja-in-English (Nelja)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: A few spiders, A mention of Jon, Existential Horror, Gen, Mind Control, Statement Fic, The Web - Freeform, original Leitner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-11-27 00:40:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20939426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nelja/pseuds/Nelja-in-English
Summary: Statement of Shannon Ewers, regarding learning things about spiderwebs in a magazine they bought.





	Destiny Looms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Time_Lady_Luna_Halliwell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Time_Lady_Luna_Halliwell/gifts).

> Thanks to Seraphina Blackwood for the beta!

I didn't mean to come here, but I don't actually mind. You have a beautiful library. It all started because I love books, you know? I love buying books, but they're expensive. So sometimes on Sunday I go to a car boot sale or a flea market. It's an opportunity to take a walk, and I can buy my next read for one pound or less.

This Sunday was not a fruitful one. The weather was pleasant though, crisp autumn sun playing in the yellow leaves. But most of the books I managed to find sounded boring, not my style at all, and the few left I already had read. It’s very frustrating to find a book you already have, cheaper than when you bought it. But that is not the point of this story.

I was leaving, annoyed. I was passing next to a stand I had already seen the first time; but it was not selling books - it had used clothes, some small pieces of furniture and a basket full of wool and knitting supplies. But on a low chest of drawers there was a magazine - a thick one, with a realistic spider web drawn on the cover, spun between tall grasses. I skimmed it; it was a former library book, and it was a kind of nature magazine for kids, and this specific issue was about finding and identifying spider webs. When I looked at the cover again, I saw a spider on the web, but she was drawn subtly enough that I had not noticed it before.

It didn't seem bad, and I hate leaving these flea markets without having bought anything. So I took "The Guide of Geometric Spiderwebs" for 50 pence.

I started to look at it that evening. It was actually a nice read, with just the right amount of funny and nice pictures in a quite instructive package. And, unlike what I expected, you didn't have to go run in the forest at night with a torch, or in the fields at dawn. Though it helped. But they also talked about all the spiders weaving pretty, almost invisible webs in cities, and I got curious.

The day after, while going to work, I let my eyes wander, and I saw one! Between two bars of a metal railing, on a residential house. I wished I had took the guide with me. I couldn't see the spider, and I remembered they recommended to use a tuning fork to pretend to be a bug and make the web vibrate. I'm not a musical person, but I made a note to acquire a tuning fork if it was not too expensive.

When I went back in the evening, I remembered the web and took a look at it again. It was still there. I took a photograph, brought it home, and compared it to the pictures. It had been the web of a silver-sided sector spider. I felt a deep satisfaction, knowing this.

And the following days, I turned into kind of a spider nerd. I discovered that quite a few were actually living in my house, and when I was walking in the street, I was seeing more and more webs. They're almost transparent; you can't really see them unless you really know what you're looking for. I was proud to be able to see them, when so many people just passed by. But I was also getting protective. I didn't want people to damage them. Do you know how long it takes for them to weave a full web? And even after the spiders have finished using one, they eat it, because it has a lot of proteins that they will need.

I didn't know, though, if I would attract unwanted attention to them by putting warning signs, wouldn't it make things worse? Some people just love to destroy.

One day, I was observing a tiny spider weaving her web between a bicycle and a tree. It was a bad idea because when the bicycle left, the web would be destroyed, so I took it in my hands and tried to explain that the tree was well enough. But while she was here, she started to weave between my fingers - which was very cute, but absolutely not a good idea either. I managed to put her on the tree again.

There I saw a bird, looking at it in a way I didn't like. I don't know what came over me, but I took a stone and threw it at it. Of course I missed. I had never thrown a stone in my life before. But the bird still caught my intention and flew away.

It was weird. But we all do weird things without really understanding why, sometimes. At least, I do. I didn't feel bad about it at all.

That night, I awoke, and felt something soft brushing against my cheek. I wanted to remove it, but my fingers didn't feel it, in spite of the skin on my face still telling me it was here. I began to get curious. I turned the lights on and went to the mirror in my bathroom.

There was a spider web on my cheek; except there wasn't. I could see it, and it tickled me a bit, but I could not touch it. I couldn't even see where it started, where it ended. The threads started to become transparent as they went far enough from me, and I still couldn't touch them. They had to be attached to something, as the threads were taut, but it was not anchored to my house, since I could move normally.

My first reaction was to count the radials to see which species of spiders it was - the Guide had been good at this, even when you can't see the spider. My second reaction was, of course, to think it was a weird dream and go back to sleep. (It didn't match any description in the Guide anyway.)

When I woke up, it was gone. Of course, I thought. I was relieved; maybe just a bit disappointed.

The next time I saw the spiderwebs, I was at work. In the next cubicle, my coworker had a spiderweb on her hand. It was a heavy, very old one. Her phone was just a few inches away, and I could see that she would have used it, but she was trapped by the spiderwebs. I thought about telling her, but of course, she would just have looked at me weird. Not that she never did before.

The third time, I was at a grocery store. I saw the webs on my arms, I felt them and I froze, because for a second I still thought it was normal spider web and I shouldn't damage them. But it wasn't, of course; and they were pulling on me. It felt soft; it felt right, and I was curious, so I followed it. Now of course I wonder. Would have been able not to follow them? Had I had a choice, this one time? But I still did follow.

There was someone with their phone sticking out their back pocket. And I took it, when they were choosing some mushrooms or something. I'm not usually that nimble, but my fingers were not shaking. They should have, but the spiderwebs were strengthening them. I took a photograph of some other person. And I put it in the pocket of a third person. No one noticed me. And then I went back to groceries.

Even now, I have no idea of why it happened. Was the third person blamed for theft? Did she really need this phone and was finding it a happy surprise? Did these three people meet? Whatever it was, I understand that it was necessary. But at the time I was really weirded out. I wondered if I had hallucinations or something. I finished buying my groceries very fast, probably forgetting things in the process.

And then I was outside, in the sun, and there were spider webs everywhere.

Every passerby in the street - they were wrapped in spiderwebs. The webs were pulling them, pushing them, making their arms and legs move like puppets. And people didn't even notice! Of course, I told myself, this had always been the case. I was just noticing it too now. I wanted for the webs to go limp, to let me take a few steps by myself - but what would it change after all? Would I be able to do something more valuable than when the spiders made me walk and talk and participate to the infinite weaving of the world?

I wanted to run, but I couldn't move. Of course the spiders stopped me. They had always made me do everything, but now I knew. I looked at myself in the vitrine of a shop; the webs were denser on me than on everyone else. They went deeper, too. I looked like I was not only wrapped in them, but they entered below my skin, in every one of my internal organs, making me breathe and my heart beat... I could see it, I was special to them and they had chosen me...

I fell on my knees, or rather, the webs pulled me down. 

I already told you I love books. I'm used to seeing metaphors on the threads of life and destiny, but of course, how could I have guessed all this was true, and had probably been raved about by a visionary of old? And why did Greek sculptors and writers present the Fates as three women weaving when they had always been, without a doubt, spiders bigger than mountains, weaving the destiny of millions of humans all over the Earth?

It was a breathtaking, terrifying revelation. And all around me people were walking, without paying attention to me, and I knew that they were puppeteered into it, because it was their destiny, as mine was to buy this book and understand.

Since that day I've been looking. Of course no one can escape the threads but I love seeing them. I love being able to identify them, by their thickness and touch and colour. Some of them are especially important, and I always feel elation in following their pull. I don't know what I will do in advance. Will I bump into someone, making them miss their bus? Will I put poison into someone's drink while they're looking the other way? I only know as I'm doing it, and that I'm accomplishing something in the universe, something important enough so the spiders of destiny specifically want it to happen.

That's the reason I came in. That's the reason I pushed, even when you told me you were no longer taking statements. I felt like I had to do it, I saw the thread pulling me inside and I gladly followed it. I thought it was to tell my story, since it's a good story. I didn't have to insist that long, after all. But now that I'm here, I thought the most important goal was to look at you. You have so many spider webs on you, so many layers, of different colours and importance, that it's a wonder you can't feel them.

But we all have our destinies, and I guess it’s yours. Goodbye. We will meet again, if the spiders want it.


End file.
